by Mark R – on October 24th, 2011
What you are seeing in the photo and the video after the jump is a demonstration by the Universite Paris Diderot at a science fair. This is the Mag Surf, and it makes our Back to the Future II hoverboard dream a reality.

The trick is that the super-cold liquid nitrogen in this board makes it superconductive, which means that it repels the magnetic field on the track. With one little push, this hoverboarder, for lack of a better word is floating across the room.

It reminds me of high school physics experiments where the teacher made a magnet hover over liquid nitrogen. I have heard that maglev trains are in the works, and similar superconductive technology could be the key to making it work. Perhaps one day we could have the maglev vehicles that can literally drive up the wall like in Minority Report.

As you can probably tell, liquid nitrogen is probably not the best way to go if you want to practically use this type of technology. It is pretty unstable, and an accident could be worse than the final scene of Terminator 2…